Joachim Seinfeld at work in his atelier in the former broadcasting station in Berlin; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Michaela Roßberg

The wonderful thing about Berlin for me as an historian is that there’s something around every corner waiting to wow me or get my “history heart” to skip a beat. I was able to get to know yet another spot this year when I interviewed Joachim Seinfeld in his atelier in the old broadcasting station in the Berlin Treptow-Köpenick district. We talked about his HeimatReisen (HomelandTravels) project for the art vending machine at the Jewish Museum Berlin (further information on the art vending machine on our website).

The station’s entryway was built with marble tiles from the New Reich Chancellery; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Michaela Roßberg

The broadcasting station on Nalepastrasse is a unique place: Beginning in 1956, programming across the former GDR was produced and broadcast from there. The public broadcasting system, established following German reunification, took over this work in 1991 and then, after several changes in ownership, the building became a place for artists from around the world to establish their ateliers.

Joachim, your photo series – available to visitors in the art vending machine – consists of a number of images depicting you in various locations around Germany. Why, of all your work, these images for the vending machine?

In 2006, I did a photo series about Poland. In 2011, I thought to do something similar about Germany. So I wanted to do it anyway, and I chose the images most interesting to me.

So are the places in the images you yourself are part of also situations from your life?

Poland, Germany and Italy are countries I’ve spent extended periods of time in and I attach importance to. I wanted to create a trilogy for these countries with the photo series. The images are largely connected to places I’ve spent a long time in, or nearby. I’m from Munich and lived in Italy, then Oldenburg, and worked two years in Poland. Now I’ve been a long time in Berlin. The altered or modified photos of the places in HeimatReisen play with concepts and cliches of a supposedly typical Germany.

Is the takeaway with the title, HeimatReisen, that you don’t feel at home in these places?

Yes. When I think about the subject of homeland, I always come back to the word, yurt. It’s the Turkish word for homeland, and the yurt, tent, which nomads use for housing, comes from this word. It’s a home you can take with you in your travels. In this sense, HeimatReisen.

The only place I really feel at home is in the mountains – the landscape of my childhood. Homeland for me is more a feeling than a particular place. It has to do with my life situation. And it for sure isn’t connected to a feeling of national pride.

Would your understanding of “homeland” be different for you if you didn’t live in Germany?

Quite possibly. The problem is that the German understanding has been completely discredited due to German history and misappropriation of the word. There’s also a positive connotation that has more to do with being and feeling at home. I’m much more comfortable with this than, for example, the Italian word for homeland, patria. That conjures up images of the goosestep in my mind.

Other countries often have a more natural connection to the idea of homeland. Is this a “German problem?”

To a degree, yes, though I personally have a problem with it in other countries’ contexts, too, especially when the concept of homeland approaches the realm of patriotism. I’m of the opinion that the word “patriotism” is itself too closely tied to thinking that one’s own country is better than another’s, and you’re better than someone else. These days, when travel is so much easier and you can experience so many more perspectives, I don’t think we need to be constrained to this idea of homeland. I think we can also find our identity elsewhere.

What do you want to say with your work? As a viewer, I asked myself: What do you, for example, want to say to me with the Oldenburg work? Something about how many neo-Nazis are in this city?

The work contains many facets and discussion points that I address with irony. HeimatReisen also means the images can contain things that I as a traveler or observer could have captured. The Oldenburg staging is of course bathed in cliché. I generally like to do that, but it’s always relevant either to history or current developments. For example, Oldenburg in addition to Weimar had a Nazi administration before 1933, and the region was a playground for their ilk in the 1990s.

But what should a viewer of your images be thinking? Do you have something particular in mind?

That’s not how art works. You don’t make art because people should see something in particular. Then it’s didactic pedagogy or agitprop. You just make art shaped by your thoughts and ideas, and you’re lucky should people happen to get from it what you intended. The artist has to accept the risk that the viewer may have a completely contrary interpretation.

That explains why I’m not an artist – that’d make me too insecure.

You don’t work completely blind; you get feedback a number of ways: If you’ve been making art for 20 years and no one wants to look at it, that’s also a kind of reaction.

First of all, it’s unbelievable fun to make theater out of it. Second of all, I’m of the opinion that a person is shaped by all aspects of a society. So why should I use another person in the staging? There are exemplary images of this in HeimatReisen and it’s pretty irrelevant who’s pictured in those. Of course I bring individual aspects into the work, for example in “Super Jew” in Friedrichhain. The “Super Jew” crosses against the light, which is actually a pointless action, but he’s very satisfied nonetheless. Sometimes you take yourself too seriously (laughs).

Is it satisfying for you as an artist when your work is available for 6 euros in a museum vending machine?

Sure. I think the idea of an art vending machine is superb. Art has to be for everyone. It’s not just for the wealthy, but should be accessible for all people – also outside a museum.

Michaela Roßberg recommends the wonderful milk bar in the broadcasting station. The small cafeteria is also open to visitors.

The end of May, as the first palpable rays of sun shone in Berlin, offered the perfect occasion for an outing to Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood. There the artists Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov showed me their atelier and told me about “Sparrows” and “4 Euros,” the two objects they made for the Jewish Museum Berlin’s art vending machine. They also talked about their current projects and responded with good humor to all of my questions above and beyond the subject of art.

Michaela Roßberg: You work together and you’re twins – identical twins. What is it like to work so closely? How do you develop ideas and work on projects? And does one or the other of you start with an image of the finished work in mind?

Maria: We do a lot through dialogue. It isn’t that one of us has an idea and, once a project is finished, could say: “That was my idea.” Our work emerges from a joint process. For instance, we walk through the city and see interesting things that get us thinking. We talk about them, and together, start forming ideas.

Natalia: The urban environment is something that frequently inspires us. Because we spend a lot of time together in observation, a lot of our work features the so-called little things of everyday life, like animals or public transportation.

What did you think when the Jewish Museum Berlin asked you about participating in the new series for the art vending machine? Why did you decide to do it?

Natalia: First of all, we have a lot of respect for the institution of the museum. But also, the project gives us the chance to tell something about ourselves and our work. We produced 400 objects for the vending machine, which means that hopefully we are reaching 400 people with our art. The feeling that you reach people with your own work is very important for artists.

Maria: We find the idea very good, as well. Art is often elitist: we can’t afford our friends’ work and they can’t afford ours. The great thing about the art vending machine is that it builds a lovely bridge between art and the museum’s visitors. We don’t make a distinction between our work for 4 euros or 400 euros. We put the same effort into both. In addition, the appreciation and respect for us as artists was pleasing, along with the impressive amount of effort the people in charge of the project made, even though the works only cost 4 euros.

Normally an artist produces one, or perhaps a few, pieces of one artwork, not 200, as for the art vending machine. Doesn’t the sheer quantity get frustrating at some point?

Natalia: On the contrary, as you work on multiple pieces from the same model, your connection to the work changes. You start to play with it; you experience it differently.

Even when it’s the 150th time?

(Both laugh)

Maria: It went really well with the “Sparrows” for the vending machine because we cast them. It was a lot of work, but not as much work as the paintings. But then even with the “4 Euros” paintings, we had specific reasons for them: there was a conceptual level to them. For us that was really a commentary on what’s happening in our field. Who decides how much a work of art is worth? Who does the appraisal?

Natalia: So museum visitors will get a piece of art by us that costs 4 euros, and for this 4 euros, they receive 4 euros back, only now as a painting that shows the coins.

Together with every object in the art vending machine there’s a leaflet with information about the artists and the ideas behind the works. Accompanying yours, we read that – in your opinion – small things often reflect larger social and historical tendencies. I find that fascinating. Could you talk more about that?

Natalia: You can see the way this works in Berlin in particular with, for instance, public transportation like the tram. There haven’t been trams in West Berlin since the 70s because they were considered too loud, a disturbance. In the East though, the network of trams was extensively developed. After reunification, people noticed that the tram significantly improves the quality of life because you can get through city traffic much more easily by tram and it’s more environmentally friendly. Now the tram network is being expanded.

Maria: Or simply coffee-to-go. Not even in German, “zum Mitnehmen”, but “to go”. How have people or society itself developed such that suddenly we want to drink our coffee while moving? Why did no one think of that before – to walk down the street with his coffee in his hand? People used to sit quietly somewhere to drink their coffee.
We try to carve out the remarkable little things that could seem trivial, but that we think demonstrate such tendencies. Like archeologists or anthropologists, we try to render these things perceptible. Imagine what will happen when someone finds a coffee-to-go cup hundreds of years from now. Researchers will probably try to draw conclusions about the society of 2015 from objects like these.

What are you working on at the moment? Is that a detail from the flea market at Berlin’s Mauerpark? At any rate I recognize the Jahn Stadium, being a soccer fan.

Natalia: Yes, we saw exactly this scene that you see on the wall, at the flea market. We took a photograph and then painted it in oils on a lot of little metal plates. We found the old pieces of furniture being sold there fascinating, together with their reflections in the puddles on the ground around them.

Maria: The work is part of a project called “Berlin & Berlin”. We showed this installation consisting of paintings and objects at the German Week in St. Petersburg last April. We find flea markets so interesting because they offer a likeness of society at this very moment and they bring so many things together that would never otherwise be together. Such as a Barbie doll with a Russian nesting doll. Both are emblematic of different worlds but now they’re for sale in the same box.

Most of your works have to do with Berlin. What does the city mean to you?

Maria: We try to investigate each place we live on a visual level. Berlin is special though: I find that this city has unbelievably many levels. They aren’t all happy or funny, but the deeper you go, the more stories open up.

Natalia: We aren’t politicians or historians. We observe the world on a different level, the visual one. When we moved here, it was clear that we needed to live in the East.

Maria: After reunification the Eastern part of the city was more exciting for artists and young people, much cheaper, and it offered more possibility. A lot of houses for artists emerged and people were able to found new galleries. We still feel this energy. But now we’re starting to discover West Berlin. You can find exciting angles on history and great places for art there. So – we will always have material for new projects in Berlin.

During the three-hour interview Michaela Roßberg not only learned a lot about artists in Berlin, but also received some excellent travel tips for St. Petersburg and Moscow.

P.S.: Further information about the artwork of Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov and the other artists of the art vending machine can be found here.

Today, 16 March, Jewish communities are celebrating Purim. On this holiday, the biblical Book of Esther is read aloud in synagogue. In keeping with tradition, the story of Esther—who saves the Jewish people in the Persian Empire from destruction by Haman, the king’s highest-ranking official—is read not from a book but from a parchment scroll. Commenting on the (Hebrew) reading, noisy hoots and rattles are sounded. (Alternative customs are described in our blog text for last year’s Purim).

Numerous Esther scrolls are currently in the custody of the Jewish Museum. The 32 works on loan will be on display along with other historical manuscripts from 4 April 2014, in the special exhibition “The Creation of the World. Illustrated Manuscripts from the Braginsky Collection.” The oldest scrolls date back to the mid-seventeenth century and each megillah, as the scrolls are called in the Hebrew, is artfully illustrated. As befits the joyful event narrated in the Book of Esther, megillot (plural form) are often colorful and adorned with illustrations.

It delights us, the museum staff, to behold such magnificent objects. For this reason, the past weeks were particularly moving – and busy. Once the objects arrived from Zurich, the museum’s paper conservators unpacked them in the presence of the curators. While this is happening, everyone involved in the exhibition watches closely. The conservators compare the objects with the records supplied by the lender, then compile a report on their current condition. Since everything arrived safely, the scrolls now need only wait for the showcases to be finished.

The scrolls will go on display courtesy of René Braginsky, whose private collection of Jewish manuscripts has already been shown in part in Amsterdam, New York and Jerusalem. His collection encompasses many precious and rare artifacts of inestimable value – which is a joy to my scholar’s heart. The Jewish Museum Berlin is very fortunate to have the opportunity to exhibit such highlights. All visitors to the museum are cordially invited to admire these treasures of manuscript art from 4 April onwards.

Michaela Roßberg, Temporary Exhibitions

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/03/esther-on-a-roll/feed/0Soccer Friendshttp://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2013/06/soccer-friends/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2013/06/soccer-friends/#commentsWed, 05 Jun 2013 07:00:18 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=991This evening a game between the Israeli and Norwegian teams will kick off the Under-21 European Football Championship in Netanya. Participating in the opening match in their home country will be something very special for the Israeli players.

Since I am a big soccer fan, this European Cup provided me with the impetus to take a closer look at what the Jewish Museum’s collection has on the subject of soccer. In our online display I discover a “Short History of Jewish Football,” and in our collection data bank I find further objects that awaken my curiosity. A photograph from the year 1936 or 1937 particularly appeals to me. I find it fascinating that soccer was already in the 1930s something boys loved to play. In the picture stands (last row, center) the young Walter Frankenstein, born in 1924, together with his soccer team:

All the boys in the picture were inhabitants at that time of Auerbach’s Orphanage in Berlin’s Schönhauser Allee. In actual fact this was no real orphanage, as it took in boys and girls whose fathers had died and whose mothers were unable for a variety of reasons to care for them.

The extraordinary thing about this picture is that Walter Frankenstein wrote the initials of all the boys on the photograph – and, through this aid to his memory, he was able to recall for the Jewish Museum every one by first and last name many decades later. Their stories were as varied as they were. Egon Strassner, far right in the middle row, was deported together with other boys from the orphanage in 1940 to Riga and later murdered in the concentration camp at Buchenwald. The little Hans Meier, in the middle of the second row, emigrated to Palestine in 1938 and later became head of the Israeli Davis Cup team. Gerhard Eckstein (last row, left) died at Auschwitz. Walter Frankenstein’s best friend Rolf Rothschild (second row, second from the left) was able to leave for Sweden in 1939. Walter Frankenstein himself went underground in 1943 with his wife Leonie and their newborn son Peter-Uri. They even had a second son before they learned in the Berlin underground that the war had ended.

Although he has lived for a long time now in Sweden, Mr. Frankenstein visits the Jewish Museum Berlin regularly and has appeared as a contemporary witness in our archival workshops. There he tells young people stories, answers questions about how he survived in Berlin, and talks to them about the period of National Socialism. This year I participated in one of the workshops and was impressed by his detailed recollections and the earnestness with which he spoke to the students.

Before I set out to write this text, I spoke on the phone with Mr. Frankenstein. I asked for his permission to publish his photograph on the Jewish Museum’s blog. Although it was 9:15 a.m. and the picture from his childhood has already been in the museum’s depot for five years, he knew immediately what photo I was talking about. He said, “Ah, you mean the picture in front of the bench where little Hans Meier is standing in the middle. Of course you may use the photograph.”

This evening I will be watching the opening game of the European Cup in Netanya, on television. And I am sure that, before the sound of the opening whistle, I will think of the team picture of those eleven boys from Auerbach’s Orphanage. Exactly as the players will pose tonight, those boys posed for the camera before the game.

Michaela Roßberg, Museum Assistant

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2013/06/soccer-friends/feed/2My First Business Trip as a Museum Assistanthttp://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2013/04/my-first-business-trip-as-a-trainee/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2013/04/my-first-business-trip-as-a-trainee/#respondFri, 12 Apr 2013 12:00:54 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=778This year, the national museum assistant convention of the German Museums Association took place from March 1 to 3 in Frankfurt-am-Main, and the theme was “Museum today: ideals, trends, and perspectives.” The convention offered academic trainees from federal German museums and memorials an extensive array of lectures, excursions, and workshops. Along with all the other museum assistants, I was impressed by the diversity of events. The Historical Museum served as a set starting point, having put nearly its entire premises at the disposal of the convention.

On the day of our arrival, there was already a chance to take a tour through one of the many museums on the embankment of the Main. I visited the Jewish Museum Frankfurt, where our group was guided by Sabine Kößling, a former museum assistant at the Jewish Museum Berlin. She told us about the planned conception of the permanent exhibition, which originates largely from 1988, the year that the museum was founded. The reworking of the exhibition is being done in stages, so that the entire museum won’t need to be closed to visitors until 2014. The section on “Festivals and feast days – religious life”, for example, was being augmented with a large mural depicting the story of Moses and the Pharaoh.

The second day featured a number of workshops. I participated first in one called “Provenance research is power: arm yourself.” Maike Brüggen, provenance researcher at the Historical Museum in Frankfurt, and Jasmin Hartmann, trainee at the Bureau for Provenance Investigation & Research in Berlin, explained the political, moral, and personal dimensions of restitution proceedings, the Washington Conference Principles, as well as the work of their institutions. Several sensational cases from recent years served as examples, for instance the return of Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the events surrounding the Portrait of Wally by Egon Schiele. Most of those present learned for the first time that it is possible to apply for research and investigation funding when an object’s origins are unclear or in doubt.

That afternoon, I attended a talk at the Liebieghaus on the subject of “Creating inventories in museums.” Lisa Mach and Yvonne Adam of the Open-Air Museum Hessenpark discussed their approach to inventory systems and introduced guidelines for dealing with and describing objects. There were numerous questions from the audience, including inquiries about their criteria for rejecting objects offered to the museum. Mach and Adam spoke not only about the problem of incongruity with the museum’s concept for the collection but also about reasons for rejection like lack of space or of appropriate storage facilities. Very few trainees were familiar with the data banks or collection strategies of their museums. Quite a number of those institutions still exclusively maintain card catalogs. In particular, the smaller museums, those with a long history and often a very large collection, reach the limits of their resources in exactly this endeavor: compiling adequate records of their holdings.

On Sunday morning, I attended “Perspectives,” which was a sort of marketplace that introduced museum assistants to professionals for perspectives on their future. Unfortunately there were only two exhibition departments and one custodian present, in addition to a lawyer, since trainees always have a host of questions about their contracts and rights. The Museum Association’s recommendations with respect to engaging museum assistants very often diverge greatly from reality. Thus, over 70% don’t even have a plan for their further education, with around 20% needing additional employment because of the low pay at the museum, and a majority of 54% having to receive support from their parents.

After an official farewell with acknowledgements, we had an opportunity to visit various museums in the area. I chose the German Leather Museum Offenbach, because the tour was to be led by the provenance researcher Beatrix Piezonka along with the museum’s leather restorer, Jutta Göpfrich, and would provide their specialized perspective on the permanent exhibition. With funds from the Institute for Provenance Research, Piezonka devotes herself to the task of examining museum correspondence from the years 1933 to 1944, which is stored in the museum’s basement. Göpfrich and her employees have to grapple above all with the perishability of leather. This extraordinarily interesting excursion provided a fitting end to an exciting weekend.